As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it...

We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.

We can see nothing whatever of the soul unless it is visible in the expression of the countenance; one might call the faces at a large assembly of people a history of the human soul...

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don’t we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other...

The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect.

If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.

It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.

When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not...

Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together.

If an angel were ever to tell us anything of his philosophy I believe many propositions would sound like 2 times 2 equals 13.

A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.

Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was...

The fly that does not want to be swatted is safest if it sits on the fly-swat.

To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject.

Man loves company – even if it is only that of a small burning candle.

With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.

Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.

Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.

If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.

We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.

That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.

Once the good man was dead, one wore his hat and another his sword as he had worn them, a third had himself barbered as he had, a fourth walked as he did, but the...

Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one: if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be...

Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.

Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.

It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one’s own advantage and to that of one’s craft that a large part of genius consists.

So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians.

Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do...

In each of us there is a little of all of us.

To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.

Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.

There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face.

Sickness is mankind’s greatest defect.

A man is never more serious than when he praise himself.

To be content with life — or to live merrily, rather –all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance; the more thoughtful we become the more earnest...

It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.

He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp.

It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people’s attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his...

If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.

He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

The proof that the human being is the noblest of all creatures is that no other creature has ever denied it.

The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.

It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth...

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.

Most subjects at universities are taught for no other purpose than that they may be re-taught when the students become teachers.

With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.

The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer’s own weaknesses reflected back from others.

The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.